Because Apple offers luxury products. People who buy luxury products are willing to pay a premium for it. Not understanding that different people value different things from you is a very weird stance to take. I personally wouldn't pay the premium price to lease a luxury automobile, but I understand why other people do it.

> I purchased the regular AirPods and this point was reached even sooner, after ~2 years of heavy usage they don't work longer than 15 minutes.

That's not been my experience, mine have a few hours of lifespan after two years, but for earbuds that's not too bad. I regularly killed wired earbuds faster than that due to wear and tear.

Everything else on this design seems to me like they'll be longer lived than their competitors. Steel headbands and magnet attached earcups sound much more durable than plastic and plastic. I'd be willing to bet that more headphones meet an early demise due to worn out earcups and broken headbands than batteries reaching EOL, so this might not be a bad trade-off for users willing to pay $500 for headphones anyways.